A Found Poem That Found Me

Below is my first found poem. What’s that you ask? Here’s an explanation:

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and re-framing them as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage) by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning.

For this poem I’ve used lyrics from the 1995 album Raoul and the Kings of Spain, the fifth album by the British pop-rock band Tears for Fears. To incorporate a challenge, each line of the 12 songs on the album are used sequentially, as they appear in the album’s song sequence. The words are theirs and credit is due to them. I’ve only played with them to fit my own desires. For now it remains untitled. The interpretation is up to you.

When the seventh son of the seventh son
Comes along and breaks the chains
Can we ever hope to seek asylum
From the bounds of fate and family?

Is this world spinning round?
Has this ship run aground?

Some of us are free
Some are bound
Some will swim
Some will drown
Some of us are saints
Some are clowns

Well I lied to the nation
While my reputation ran dry

It seems we caused a forest fire
With just a flicker of a flame
And now I set alight to everything
Now all I do is cause you pain

I won’t keep secrets alive
Without the will to survive

I used to think the time would come
When man would rise above the beast
I gave up thinking that way long ago

We could have healed this blindness
With some human kindness
I know secrets kill you

I won’t keep secrets alive
Without the will to survive
These are the days of a different paradigm

Ours is not to reason why
As we fall from way up high
Into the water
Like a lamb to the slaughter

Sets us up for one more heartbreak
Dressed as the devil in a cosmic pantomime
To spite the dark
In spite of the darkness

Great wide stretches of canvas
Signed by a godless name
Strange bright colors of madness
Only a fool would frame

Sketches of Pain

The works of art
We failed to imagine

Sketches of Pain

When time is like a needle
And night is the longest day
A home is a cathedral
A place where a king can pray

Ghosts all gone
To another place

What’s the matter with your life?
Did someone come and shoot your with wife?
Set aside these vacant rules
Break them now and don’t get fooled again.

Sorry–
How many times must I say
Life is not a cake to separate?

What do I have to do
To save you from worry
Cut off my nose
To spite my face?

When you look into these eyes,
Do you see civilized
Or son of Sam?
Will you love or do you hate?
Why do you hesitate?

Sorry–
How many times must I say
Life is not a cake to separate?

Mistress of the mind
Through the haze, remember
Color for the colorblind
Nature a soul extreme
Nothing seems to die

Through the maze, precisely
Through the myriad of schemes
Rubbishing the Philistines

I knew all of this was coming
Ain’t that odd
Some things come out of nothing
As with God

Played my part
Mapped out all contradictions
Of the heart
A situation I tried to diffuse

Long way back clouds were forming
If by choice
Some things come as a warning
Hear their voice

I had a dream
Don’t say ” Thank God for simple truths ”
The shutters were never open
All of the things
I never knew
I should have said
Curled up in bed

Me and my big ideas
Won’t wash away your tears
Go get a volunteer
He will see inside your mind

The shadows crack and start to creep
Conversation drag its feet
I wish we’d both been more discreet

Me and my big ideas

Well they love you when you’re weak
It’s that thing we call control
There’s a deep frustration
Black thoughts

In a way this dream is over
Blown away our four leaf clover
There’s no reason why
That I’m not that kind